The English Concert's performance at Weill Recital Hall on Wednesday evening had plenty to recommend it, not least Rachel Podger's magnificent violin playing in a pair of Vivaldi Concertos, and intensely dramatic accounts of Monteverdi and Handel vocal works with the mezzo-soprano Alice Coote.

But for a listener who has followed this group since the 1970s, when its founder, the harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock, built it into one of the period-instrument world's most successful ensembles, one of the most striking aspects of the concert was the degree to which it showed how much this group has changed.

Now it is directed by Harry Bicket, who leads it from a stack of keyboards - a legless harpsichord, resting atop a chamber organ. None of the regulars from the early days remain on the roster, partly because so many of the original musicians have become soloists or directors of their own groups. Where Mr. Pinnock's focus was on the later Baroque and early Classical repertory, on Wednesday Mr. Bicket reached back to Monteverdi and the late Renaissance composer John Dowland.

But the biggest difference was a matter of style. In its early days the English Concert concentrated on recreating Baroque and Classical timbres and balances, and observing the details of ornamentation and other period concerns. Now those details are a given, and the playing has a freedom unimaginable in Mr. Pinnock's day.

A performance of Vivaldi's Sonata in D minor (Op. 1, No. 12) began with an improvised Baroque guitar solo by William Carter (based on the "Follia" theme, on which this sonata is an expansive set of variations) and also included passages in which Peter McCarthy, the bassist, rapped percussively on the side of his instrument. The work's twin solo violin lines were played with such virtuosic fire and lively interaction by Ms. Podger and Walter Reiter that those comparatively freewheeling touches were an enhancement rather than a distraction.

On her own, Ms. Podger brought her rich tone and imaginative approach to phrasing and embellishment to an account of Vivaldi's Concerto in D (RV 208), "Il Grosso Mogul," that stressed the work's exoticism, particularly in the expansive slow movement. And Jonathan Manson, if not quite as colorful a player as Ms. Podger, gave a sizzling performance of Vivaldi's Cello Concerto in C minor (RV 401).

The program's vocal works were less consistent. Ms. Coote's big, rich tone and lavish vibrato are honed for the opera house, and she used those assets with wrenching directness in her electrifying accounts of Handel's "Lucrezia" (HWV 145) and Monteverdi's "Lamento d'Arianna."

Ms. Coote's style was less suited to Dowland's intimate, melancholy songs, though she reined in her sense of grandly projected drama sufficiently to make "In Darkness Let Me Dwell" the chilling meditation it should be, and she had the interesting, if not entirely workable, idea of turning "Come Again" into what could have been another breathless aria for Cherubino in "Le Nozze di Figaro."

But the highlight of the Dowland set was Mr. Carter's elaborately ornamented lute performance of the "Lachrimae Pavan."